


Hawke's Return

by ShamHarga



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, silliness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-31
Updated: 2015-08-31
Packaged: 2018-04-18 09:28:13
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,987
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4700897
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShamHarga/pseuds/ShamHarga
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The announcement of Trespasser brought lots of speculation to my dash about the fate of the one left in the Fade.</p>
<p>Could they survive? How might it change them? And what could possibly be strong enough to bring Hawke back?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hawke's Return

It's after Valammar that she wakes to Varric's pale face staring down at her. He hovers so close she can see her own shocked expression in his wide eyes.

'What's going on?' he asks, as though he's the one receiving a rude interruption. She can count every hair in his frowning eyebrows.

She raises onto an elbow and gently pushes him away. He doesn't resist. 

The fire is almost embers. The stars wink down on a warm, quiet evening in the Hinterlands. She must have drifted off. 

'I could ask you the same. What happened?' Darkspawn and red lyrium and Bianca swim across hazy consciousness. It's been a long day.

Varric scoots back, pushing his legs in front of him.  'Nothing. Seems like you talk when you sleep.' He digs at the ground with his heels. 'Nothing to worry about.' 

She can't help but notice the hand that reaches for his crossbow.

\--- 

The next time it happens is in the Emprise du Lion. She turns back from closing a rift, her left hand tight and tingly, to see Varric staring; his cheeks drained of colour despite the biting air.

'Tell me you heard that.' He says, his knuckles ice-white around Bianca. 

He reads her face quickly.

'A voice.' he says. 'There was a voice.'  

It's so close to a plea that she hates to deny it. But there was no voice, just the usual thunder of the rift collapsing. 

'It's a noisy business, and the Fade is so close. It's no surprise you sometimes hear things.' 

Varric shakes his head and picks his way across the slick ice. 'I need to get more sleep.'

They all do. Everyone is jittery. By the time they return to Sahrnia camp the fennec population has paid a heavy price for strained patience and too-quick sword arms. And the tentative truce between Varric and Cassandra has frayed almost beyond rescue.

She is not surprised when one of the villagers scuttles in to complain about the crazed elf unnerving everyone. She finds Sera hopping in the snow, peppering trees and fenceposts with arrows and insults. 

The Inquisitor can't make much sense of it, but picks out most of the obscenities.

'Dare I ask?'

Sera looses another arrow, hammering the fork of a nearby evergreen.

'Pissing veil. Frigging Varric.' She punctuates each sentence with a new arrow. 'Demon shitballs.' 

Sera kicks the ground, scattering snow and pine needles. She turns, looking flushed and so young the Inquisitor feels afraid. 

'Don't let it find me'. Sera's voice is a whisper this time. 'I heard it, too.'

\---

It must be because she's listening for it. That's the only reason. 

A voice is there, when she closes the rifts. A mumble picked out in the chittering. A deep insistent tone with the rolling cadence of human speech. She hears one word clearly. Betrayal. 

She doesn't say so to Varric. It's just a trick of imagination.  A childish game, like finding faces in the knots of trees. He looks haunted enough as it is. 

Then the problem becomes clear when Varric admits, not to her, but to Dorian, that he hears Hawke's voice. 

It makes sense, of course. Guilt is swiftly diagnosed and a few of the more discreet physicians recommend sleep, and perhaps a couple of long conversations with a trusted friend. Varric ignores advice as usual and throws himself into protracted arguments with the Merchants Guild and repeated losses at Wicked Grace. 

 

One night she wakes in a cold sweat. Her memory of the Fade is its usual distorted self, the green slices of it already falling away like melting ice. But one thought spikes clear the fog.

There is a man, running across falling rock. Sideways lanterns catch his furious steps and the spider-beasts chasing him. When he reaches for her, his eyes are mad. 

In the dream, Hawke's hands were painful on her shoulders, his message raw. 'Tell Varric I'm coming.'

 

Fear grips her when they find their next rift. She has not been this scared of her power since falling from the Fade the first time. They beat back the demons until there is a gap in their ranks. Sealing the veil is her gift, as instinctive now as buckling her belt. But touching it reveals her presence to the other side, even as she closes it. 

Varric is not with them to see her hesitate. To wonder why she waits until her companions shout before performing the seal as fast as she can manage.

She doesn't tell him when she returns. But he knows anyway.

He stops her in the hall, accusing. 'You hear it, too.'

\---

The Hawke that stalks her dreams is angry. A streak of furious black, with manic eyes that snare her from leagues away. He is always moving, away from twisted horrors and towards, endlessly, tirelessly, towards her. 

Guilt, that's what it is. Understandable. Deserved. 

'I will find you.' He promises, with foamy teeth like a rabid hound.

It's an expression of guilt. But it is also an expression of hope, and that is so much more dangerous. 

She will not fall prey to it. And she will not let Varric sink himself with it. 

 

The guilt is what draws Cole to her. He appears on her balcony, staring somewhere she can't see. 

'The hawk hunts its masters hand.' He proclaims 'Clawing, climbing, catching close. Heart hurts. A question hot as fire.'

Her throat burns. Cole eyeballs her.

'Why them and not me?'

'Cole...' she begins, then thinks better of it. 'Please don't say that to Varric.' 

 

Varric comes anyway. He strides into the war room with more confidence than he's had in weeks. 

'I think Hawke survived. We need to help him.'

They are not unprepared. She has finally admitted her experience to her councillors. And her fears. 

Cullen voices them for her. 'We have heard the situation. It is likely a demon. Playing on our members of the Inquisition. Sowing unrest.'

'And if it is, it is succeeding.' Leliana is kind, but firm. 

Varric protests. 'We know is possible to survive. To come back out. You did.' He stares at her and the guilt threatens to swallow her. 'The Divine helped you out of the rift. How can we not do the same for Hawke.'

She doesn't trust herself to answer. She lets her advisors proceed through the sane concerns. 

' - if there even is something - 

' - how would we accomplish - '

' - ignoring the fact that it is almost certainly a demon - '

Varric ignores them. He waits for her answer. There is a blockage in her throat, a padlock of fear and regret and the despair in his eyes not enough to unlock it. She feels the Divine's hand on her wrist, pulling her to safety, launching her back into the world. The Inquisitor knows she does not owe her life to the Maker, or Andraste, or any of the gods, but a frail old woman who gave everything for a scrap of person she'd never met. 

She had asked Hawke to stay. Varric stares. She can feel his unspoken questions; they snake in her stomach, twisting and churning. As her advisors argue themselves full circle he shakes his head and walks out.

Later, she finds him in the library, hidden in a fort of magical tomes he can't hope to understand. 

He doesn't protest as she sits next to him, and although he keeps his gaze on his book his eyes don't move across the grainy page.

'Varric. Even if we can do it, even if it is Hawke, he may not be your Hawke. He sounds angry. You might not want to see him.'

Varric looks sick, but not surprised. He steadies his hands against the desk.

'Inquisitor, I don't care. Whatever he wants to do to me... I'll take anything to have him here.'

\---

It is not too hard to persuade the advisors, in the end. Everyone is getting tired of the distraction. There are conditions to the plan, of course, in case it turns from rescue to battle. They find a rift away from Skyhold, some shoreline ruins in the Exalted Plains. The voice has always been strongest to the west and the building is defensible should their worst suspicions be confirmed. Cullen insists on sending Templars to bolster their ranks, and Dorian, Solas and Vivienne all demand a place. She knows each has their own motivation. In truth, she is relieved that someone will be there to strike the killing blow that she is not sure she could deliver.

She has already killed him once.

The battle against the rift dwellers is clean and as soon the area is clear she puts her hand to the rupture. Against her instincts to close it she widens it to a window. 'Hawke!' she calls, through the stream of power in her fist as much as her voice. 'Hawke; if you're in there, we're waiting for you.'

On her signal the mages erect a barrier around the rift. The warriors form two concentric circles around the window, one within the barrier and one to catch any stragglers that escape beyond. 

The first things that come through are monsters. Some form lazy impressions - dark hair, or extra spikes on a the shoulder of a shade that prove her call has reached the other side. She's glad that Varric is banned from the field.

One desire demon appears with dark hair, broad shoulders and a split grin. She feels sick as Bull rips the final breath from its ribs. 

After several waves, their group is battered but whole. Blackwall's off-hand is hanging oddly.Cassandra is spitting with discomfort. The mages are flagging. Solas is as unmoved as ever but Dorian and Vivienne are looking less impeccable, although their barrier holds. 

'I understand your optimism, my dear, but I think this is all the proof we need to forget this enterprise.' 

She knows Vivienne is right, but only now that she thinks to close the rift does she realise just how much she had wanted it to be true. For Hawke to be alive, no matter how twisted or vengeful. For one of the soldiers she has sent to his death to. come back. 

How will she tell Varric?

'Inquisitor - ' Cassandra begins.

'Wait!' There is a cry. Something falls through. Not big, like the horned demons, but heavy. It hits the flat earth with the weight of bones. It does not reform itself from fade stuff but stays sprawled on the ground, furred shoulders trembling.

Solas shouts to her. 'This one feels different'. She doesn't need the warning.

'Stay your weapons!' Her own order sounds clear, even past the heartbeat thunder in her ears.

The soliders within the barrier lean back out of claw reach. Their weapons bristle, torn between the rift above their heads and the enemy at their feet.

The broken figure tries to drag itself to standing. The thorny ring of swords sharpens around a head that is strikingly human. The eyes shadowed, clothes and hair lank, dribbling into one another like a smudged charcoal. Gashes mar his face. They are open and weeping but instead of blood it's the eerie green of the Fade. He sways to his knees. 

It's Hawke. 

'Move back!' she orders. Quicker now, she lifts her hand and presses the seams of reality back over the rift. Hawke covers his ears as the world screams above him. And then there is only birdsong and gasping. 

'That was bracing.' Says Hawke. Alone, kneeling and bedraggled in the mage's circle he looks so small. Still, he fixes her with the haughtiness of a Champion. 'Now where's that damned dwarf?' 

She shivers to meet his eyes again, here in the real world. They do not shine like they did in the fade. She pull all the authority she can muster around herself, like a cloak against the cold.

'He's not here. We have questions for you. To ascertain -'

'Why don't we let the man who just spent ages battling through fade monsters go first? I demand to see Varric.' 

'Hawke, you will -'

'I'm here.' Varric pushes through the thick line of soldiers. He was supposed to stay at camp, under heavy guard. She irritated but not surprised. 

'There he is. Teller of my tales, keeper of my secrets. You had to be around.' Hawke's tone is dark and smug. It reminds her of Corypheus' Nightmare. Her stomach plummets. This may well be a huge mistake. 

'Varric,' she warns, 'we don't know what this is.'

'My dear, this is exactly the complexion of a demon. Beware of giving it what it wants.'

Varric pushes past Vivienne. He ignores them all. His hand meets the magical barrier, pushing into it. Dorian, or maybe it is Solas, lets the shimmering ring flex and shrink, until Varric can walk it close to his friend as though tightening the neck of a noose. With Hawke still on his knees, Varric's hand stops just above his dark head. His fingers flex in a caress. The barrier sparks but stays solid.

'If you are Hawke, what did I give you after the Qunari invaded?'

'Is this a game of catch out the demon? Oh, I'm good at this. Whelks make you sick. You have a girl's middle name. And you cried at the ending of your own book. Narcissist.'

Hawke woozes, and grabs the dirt to steady himself. His gauntlet bites the dirt, mud smearing old blood on the tarnished claws.

'And since you asked, you brought me a nauseating chapter of your book and some royalties. Enough for a night at the Hanged Man but not a litter home, you bastard.'

'It's him.' Varric's voice is thick. 'Take the barrier down, Sparkler.'

Dorian throws her a look behind the dwarf's head. 'I'm not sure such a good idea.' He says, gently. 'At least until we know what his intentions are.'

Varric is still staring at Hawke. 'He wants to come home. Wouldn't you?'

Solas moves to her side. His eyes are serious. 'To keep oneself whole and alive in the fade would take enormous force of will. It is an impressive feat, but it would be wise to discover what purpose kept him going.' 

Vivienne snorts. 'Impressive! There are far less noble ways to survive in that place. It would be naive to assume the fairy tale when the reality is much more dangerous.'

The Inquisitor knows Vivienne means demons, but she recalls the manic muttering from rifts and dreams. Remembered words canter through her brain. Tell Varric I'm coming.

Cassandra speaks up. The maker intervened for the Herald, maybe he has a purpose for the Champion.' The seeker has always had an unusual soft spot for the Champion. But even she doesn't sound wholly convinced.

'Actually,' Hawke pitches like a ship in a storm, trying to hold himself straight on his knees. 'I came back because I have a question for my so-called friend here.'

Varric's face is jaw is trembling, like a drum stretched too tight. 'A little privacy, Inquisitor?'

She remembers running feet. A heavy voice. Betrayal. 'We're not leaving you alone.' She is glad for the rustle of armour at her back. 

Hawke looks feral. His clothes are tattered, parts of him almost torn away. What strength of purpose could keep a man going, after being abandoned in the fade? What need could be so strong to bring a person back. Cole's question catches her, drops her heart: why them and not me?

Hawke speaks, his attention dedicated to Varric. 'Word gets around in the Fade, you know. I hear all the things you do with the Inquisition.'

'Ten years of sharing battles, and drinks, and weird shit with rock monsters. And holding each other's heads over buckets - although now that I say it I admit that was mostly my fault. But the point is I thought you were my friend. I trusted you with my secrets and you kept the ones that you didn't spill in the damn book. And I kept the stories you gave me because that's what friends do. And despite enormous temptation I didn't try to pry the rest open because you said some things a man has to keep for himself. And I believed you, because you were the best dwarf I could ever imagine. The greatest.'

'Ten years, Varric. More than anything, I believed in you.'

Varric's shoulders are shaking. She can see the tears. Maybe this truly is a demon, wearing the perfect mask to destroy her companions one by one. And the guilt strikes again: wouldn't that be better? Give her a monster to fight, rather than the Champion she sent to die. 

'I think this is enough.' She pulls her weapon from her back, reaches out to Varric.

'No.' Varric finally finds his voice, though it staggers over the words. 'Hawke can say what he has to. And if you don't remove this damned barrier I'll drop a grenade and none of us will know who we are.'

Her warriors look to her, scattered faces of fear and bewilderment. The Champion is a near-mystical figure and now he appears to have walked from the Fade. They will wait on her order. A decision bears down on her. Again. She lowers her palm gently and they know what to do. There is a metallic rustle as every weapon is trained on Hawke. No-one moves as the barrier melts away, Vivienne reeling in her magic last. 

Hawke sags against Varric's shoulder - her fingertips itch as he grips the dwarf's coat. Yet he does not strike. There are no claws. He simply holds Varric close.

'After all we've been through.' Hawke's voice is so low she barely catches it. Varric buries his face in Hawke's neck so she can only see shiver of his duster as Hawke mutters in his ear. 'She's just some damn dwarf with a workshop?'

**Author's Note:**

> I know this was a bit of crack, but I hope it is addressed somewhere in canon one day. Poor Hawke; he's gone for barely a moment before Varric is parading his big secret before every Orlesian in the Great Hall.


End file.
